Are we demented, or am I disturbed?
by glass-jars
Summary: Done for the SPN horror challenge thing. Also on AO3.


There was a strange music coming from... below?

No.

Yes. It drifted from beneath my feet—through the floor boards. I couldn't tell quite what it was, but it was upbeat and vibrant. A vitality I don't think I'd ever heard in American music. Not even the music Dean listened to was like that.

And it sounded somewhat familiar. I'd probably heard it at some party back in college. It made the words "gypsy punk" float through my head.

And then I heard a loud burst of some foreign language and I thought, _Ah yes_. Some strange girl with blonde dreadlocks had listened to this band often. The mix of English and Ukrainian was fascinating.

I knelt and pressed my ear to the floorboards. Besides being muffled by the wood, it sounded distorted. Clearly, the speakers pumping it out weren't made to be used at such a high volume. I could hear a frantic thudding noise—rhythmic and barely matching with the music (dancing along, perhaps)—and the sound of smooth singing could just barely be made out underneath the violent tune.

I stood, and figured it best to return to my current task—I needed to figure out where the hell I was, and how I had gotten there.

The room felt spacious. It was dark, so I couldn't see much, but some sickly light filtered in through a broken and semi-boarded up window. There seemed to be some graffiti on the floor but I couldn't make it out. The shadows stretched out far beyond the circle of illumination from outside. It would have been unsettling, but I knew the blackness of night well, and this wasn't much different. I didn't have to bend to walk so I figured it probably wasn't an attic.

I ventured nearer to the window.

A rush of snow obscured the world through the shattered glass. Pale and pinkish and blurry. Yet... I wasn't cold. I wore some white, familiar clothes. No socks. A t-shirt and loose pants. They were the clothes I wore in the hospital. But even with so few layers I felt a little warm. I sighed.

Looked around the room.

Oh thank God. A thin string of light wavered to my right, which meant there had to be a door. I headed over to that, and it took ages until I finally felt my hand brush up against a freezing doorknob, slick with use but dusty. I twisted and for one sick second it didn't move, but then it finally cracked to the left and I was able to push the door open.

The overwhelming sound of Ke$ha's "Out Alive" greeted me, tripping disjointedly from crackling speakers. It started the second I opened the door. My sense of direction had been off, unless this room somehow existed underneath the one with the window. But there I was- suddenly in a garishly lit space with a mirrored ceiling and white carpeting and red tapestries, with strangely entrancing pop music assaulting my ears.

I glanced behind me and there was no door.

Even though I had just come through one.

What the Hell?

"Heeeeeey, Sammy!"

I froze for a second, and spun around on my heel. There was no one there, but that voice haunted my nightmares—fluid, inviting, a little too friendly, with the undertone of a threat at all times. I knew who it was.

I swallowed thickly, scanning the deep scarlet wall-hangings, seeing myself reflected in the ceiling. No one. I felt incredibly exposed, in my stark white hospital clothes. I breathed out to try and calm myself. I knew how to deal with this. It had been awhile, but I could do it again. I had to. At worst it was a hallucination like the warehouse, at best it was a bad dream.

"Sammy, you sure have lost your touch!"

I shivered. I hadn't been cold in the dark room, but this place was much chillier, and seemed to grow colder every second. I wrapped my arms around myself.

"I mean, I'm right here! Can't you _see_ me?"

My breath clouded. At that point, if I hadn't recognized the voice, I would have figured out who it was anyhow.

I glanced around again. Something caught my eye so I looked up. The mirrored ceiling was frosting over at a visible rate. It actually made a crackling sound. And I'd thought that only happened in movies.

As the mirrors grew obscured under the thin ice, the room grew darker and duller—the curtains on the walls went a strange puce color and the white carpet looked ragged and stained. Flakes of frost dropped from the ceiling and I shivered violently, digging my fingers into my arms as if the pain could make my surroundings disappear.

But it seemed that my little trick no longer whisked my tormentor off. (Or maybe it only worked with the cute on my hand, long gone.)

"Hello, Sam." His low voice drifted up behind me, like honey trickling behind my ear.

I flinched. A chill breath gusted over my skin. I turned my head, and there he was, wide smile and sores plotted across his skin.

Lucifer.

He wore an outfit identical to mine. I had never seen him in anything like that before. Usually it was a green shirt and jeans. He bared his teeth in a grin that seemed a little too wide as I turned to face him, and prodded my forehead with one outstretched finger.

"Sammy, Sammy, _Sammy_..." He shook his head, seeming amused. Condescending. "It's about time." He walked to the other side of the now grimy and ice-encrusted room, flinging his arms out wide with an animated spin on his heel. "I'm so handsome, after all, that any second you couldn't see me was a second wasted!" He raised his eyebrows. I saw his expression clearly, though he was more than fifty feet away.

"Where the hell am I?" I kept my arms tucked close, not daring to take my eyes away. But he disappeared with a flutter just like any other angel would, and reappeared less than five inches away from me. I tried not to jump with the shock.

He leaned up close. "Oh, Sammy." He eyed me like a piece of meat. "_Guess_."

And the room began to melt in on itself without warning, twisting around to something else.

I found myself strapped to a freezing metal table of some kind—I realized it was an operating table, as I stared up at the circle of lights above me. Lucifer chuckled, and leaned over, the harsh light haloing behind his head. A scalpel winked at me from his fingers. His scrubs seemed to have been dyed with blood—nearly black, stiff, strange looking. His expression held kindness, but his eyes were sharp.

I couldn't blink or make my fingers twitch.

The violent blue of his eyes bore into me.

I could feel the scalpel slide down my skin, burning like lightning and venom.

I wanted to scream but my throat restricted and kept me mute.

I couldn't tell where he was cutting or if this whole ordeal was really happening at all. Misery trudged through my veins as if it came directly from the abandoned IV in the corner, and made my entire existence hiss and sting and pray for unlikely salvation. My vision narrowed and everything unfocused and turned white except for the hyper-clarity of Lucifer's leering face.

His face alternated between blurriness and clarity, sharpening and shifting in my mind, his skin seemingly tighter until he was a stained and mummified skull with red lacerations and blisters, his electric eyes rolling in their sockets and his teeth flashing in the bright light.

"Have you guessed?"

I almost didn't understand what he was saying but a slight flash of understanding rippled through my confusion and suffering and I groaned near inaudibly. No words would form from my raw throat. (How was it raw when I hadn't been able to scream?) What did he mean by that?

Abruptly, I was sitting upright on the table and could move once more. He stood aside in a leisurely manner with his arms loosely crossed, gazing softly at me. I looked down at myself. Not a mark on me. A dull throb still rolled throughout my body. But the pain had gone and I could think and function enough to slur out a hoarse, "What?"

"Have you guessed where you are?" He smiled as if I were a child and he was trying to teach me something simple. "You did want to know, after all."

I gaped at him.

I stood, and even though I towered over his stout body he still seemed to loom over me no matter where I looked. He had a way of doing that. I took a breath. "I have no idea." I tried not to look him in the face but his eyes seemed to reach out and clutch mine in their stare and I couldn't break the away. "Castiel said that he pulled the insanity from my mind into his, so I don't know how I'm even seeing you!" I grew gradually more worked up, waving my hands around. "Did I die?! Am I in Hell, or something?! Because I shouldn't be seeing you anymore!"

Lucifer turned to face the window of the operating room, a panel of grime showing an abandoned little box with a rusted sink and dust across the surfaces. He sighed, heavy and world-weary. "Sam..." He paused. "Sammy."

I fidgeted, my jaw clenching, as my hands tightened into fists.

He whirled to face me with a manic grin stretched across his face. "You're so slow!"

I could feel the muscles tighten in my neck. Closed my eyes briefly. Breaking into a fit of rage would do nothing but damage. To myself.

My tormentor clicked his tongue at me and reached up to straighten the collar of my t-shirt. "I was the Morning Star, my dear Sammy. I may be fallen, but I'm still an _archangel_." He wore an expression of mildly amused incredulity. Like I was stupid in his mind.

I tried not to shake under his touch.

"Yeah." I gritted out. "Guess so."

He raised one eyebrow with a tilt of his head—like some sinister bastardization of the way Castiel and the other angels tilted theirs. Our surroundings winked out briefly, and then I found myself on a craggy rock in the middle of a vast expanse of black water, writhing as if it was alive, licking at the slick red stone we stood on. The sky was blacker and cracked through with blue lightning. The constant sound of thunder and tortured shrieks echoed deafeningly around us, bouncing off every surface until the noise seemed to come from all directions at once. I shuddered and pulled in close on myself.

Lucifer leaned against my side playfully, nudging my elbow the in the manner a friend might do. "Look at that, Sam. Isn't that adorable?"

A frozen wind bit at my skin and I followed the path of his crooked pinky finger.

Three massive hellhounds—there was nothing else they could be with the way their skin slid over their muscles so translucently—barreled through the thick water, snapping their slavering jaws at each other with more malice than camaraderie, breath pouring out in clouds of steam against the cold air. I could hear them growl and snarl, and one of them ripped and scratched at some hunk of flesh that I prayed wasn't human. But I knew it was.

"That's... not adorable." I bit my tongue.

He only sighed in exasperation. "You lack an eye for sweetness."

I held back a reply. Didn't need to say something I'd regret.

"You still trying to figure out how I'm here? 'Cause it's simple really." He looked pointedly at me. Encouraging but aggressive at the same time.

I shook my head, clutching at my arms to anchor myself.

He laughed viciously, standing. The tattoo on my chest began to sear. I grunted, curling in on myself. "What are you—"

Any other words I had in mind got erased from my thoughts abruptly as a horrible sensation ripped through my bones—like they were all shattering and disintegrating and once and sending shards out to pierce my muscles.

Lucifer gripped my right arm and dragged me to my feet and spun me to face the dogs. I cried out.

"Just _look_!" He whispered, false awe lain thickly through his voice. "Look at those disgusting creatures! Trying to pull themselves free! Animals!"

I realized he wasn't talking about the dogs, and squinting through pain I could see that the water churned not because it was alive, but because it was full of screaming bodies reaching their hands to grope at the air and to claw at the hell hounds, only to be snapped up like fish and rent to shreds between their fangs.

Then the smell hit.

Sharp and metallic like blood, with a sweet and rotten undertone, and something harsh that reminded me of snow. I moaned some attempt at words and failed at getting my message across.

Only, "Hurts..."

Lucifer snorted so hard I hoped he'd injured himself, and shoved me back to sit on the rock again. All sounds had ceased and the smell retreated beneath the scent of winter. Nothing moved. Everything was coated in a thick layer of blackish-red ice. The frozen limbs stretching from the lake were revolting, but the statue-like dogs held a menacing air even in their still state.

Lucifer laughed, loud and from the throat. "Delightful! Like a freeze-ray!" He stepped down and let himself slide to lay on his back on the ice, and rolled his head up to lock his eyes in mine. "Don't you agree?"

My mouth wouldn't open to form words.

I couldn't move again. And the pain kept on. It felt like my skin was peeling off, but there was nothing visibly wrong with me.

With a heavy sigh, Lucifer pulled himself to his feet and rolled his eyes, and as he moved toward me the lake faded away. He stopped close in front of me, wearing a solid red suit (a shade of maroon that was almost black) with a blindingly white rose in the lapel, and I was locked in place with ice in my veins and the feel of nice fabric against my skin.

The hold on me melted away with the pain when Lucifer pinched my cheek and danced away with a snarled, "Catch me if you can!"

And he was gone.

I looked down at myself. I was in a suit identical to his, but with switched colors. White fabric and violently crimson rose. I looked back up. I was nowhere. All around me was a void—not white or black or anything. It was the total absence of anything. The white of my suit practically glowed in its nothingness.

"_LUCIFER_!"

It hurt my still-stinging throat to shout but I did anyway because at least then there would be noise. Anything was better than the sucking nothingness around me.

"LUCIFER, WHAT THE FUCK _IS_ THIS?!"

I still had no idea why I had been seeing him.

But a thought dawned on me.

I could hear my heart beating in the audible silence, hear the blood rushing through my ears, hear myself blink. I could hear my lungs expand and my hair shift ever so slightly.

I felt like I was going to vomit.

My voice came out as a tiny whisper but it roared in the stillness. "Lucifer..." I licked my lips. "Did you escape from the cage?" I felt small. I had no ground to stand on, and no sky to look up at, and no horizon with which to judge distance, and no breeze to say _You exist_. Just... absence. At least the fallen angel would remind me that I was somewhat alive.

"TA-DAAAA!"

I yelled out in shock and nearly fell over, but Lucifer deftly caught at my right arm and held me upright.

I breathed shallow and fast, trembling and feeling overworked and unsteady on my feet.

I might topple at any moment.

"Looks like the little boy's been paying attention!" Lucifer squeezed my bicep tighter. "Though he's still a bit off the mark!" He smirked at me, letting his eyes rake up and down my body. "Gotta say, Sammy Boy, the suit looks _good_." He winked and turned away again, letting his grip on my arm loosen.

I sank to my knees, trying to be calm. "What... do you mean?"

He chuckled to himself briefly. Then turned his eyes back to me. "Sammy, I'm still pretty powerful, despite what you seem to think." He dropped down into a cross-legged position in front of me, dangling his fingers across his knees. "And if even the little ol' Samantha Stephenses of the world can astrally project, well surely a massive being such as myself can conjure up a little crazy!" He grinned wildly. "Besides, Sammy, you have direct experience with power as vast as mine. If my puny little bro can lock you up on loop then surely the brightest angel in Heaven can do some finger waving from down in the cage!" He leaned forward conspiratorially. Reached out a hand to grab my wrist. "_Right_?"

He exploded into a flock of bleeding white crows who all fell to the dirt—the ground which hadn't been there before. Blood-soaked grass and mud.

Another scenery change, then. I stood stiffly. I still wore my suit, though now the knees were stained a deep scarlet. My arm throbbed where he'd held it. I was tempted to see if he had left a handprint.

"Sammy, what are you waiting for?!"

I turned to face him. He stood in the back of a rusted out off-white truck. The engine bellowed and I reached out to take his hand unwillingly—inexorably pulled—and he practically ripped my arm out of its socket as he tugged me into the bed of the truck with him. We fell with a clatter, and he rolled me onto my back to use my stomach as a pillow as he propped his heels up against the windows on the rear of the truck's cabin. I had to pull my knees up to be able to lay horizontally.

The truck trundled onward, leaving the patch of wet red grass behind. I had no idea who drove it, or even if _anyone_ was. Lucifer jabbed me in the ribs with one elbow as he stretched his arms out over his head and he said, "Sam. Have you figured out where you are?"

I closed my eyes, sighing. I could feel a killer headache coming on. "It's not a dream. Is it?"

He laughed loud and jarring—startling a flock of mourning doves from a gnarly tree as we passed by. "Smart boy." Then he rolled to face me better, laying on his side and pressing his ear against my ribs. His eyes were closed—Thank God—and he looked almost like he was sleeping. Or listening. The scabs on his skin were obscured by shadow and his suit was gone, though I still wore mine. His shirt disturbed me, and I realized the picture on it was of that fucked up rabbit thing from _Donnie Darko_. I grimaced.

"You're nervous."

_What_? I glared at him, wishing he would leave me alone and let me be sane. But there was nothing I could do.

He cracked one eye open and the blue seemed to glow through the darkness. It unsettled me.

"Your heart rate." He acted as if that explained everything. "And now you're also irritated. Awww." He smirked teasingly at me, both eyes wide open and bright now. "What a precious boy Sammy is." He quirked his eyebrows. There was something menacing and heavy in his voice.

I let my head thud back against the lining of the truck bed and glowered at the starless sky above. The moon dangled unusually fat and high in the sky, with a sickly blue light ringing it like a halo.

A rustle broke the quiet, and quick as a blink his face was leering down at me, backlit by the moon and split with a sinister grin. His teeth caught the light startlingly and his gaze was feral. I tried to sit up or pull away or_ something_ but he dug his fingers into my arm and held me down with ease. "Can't have you escaping now, Sammy." His voice was teasing and tight and held a cheeriness that made me think of a scorpion hiding beneath bed sheets, waiting for its chance to strike out.

Lucifer's other hand slithered up to prod at my neck and his grin widened—if that was even possible—as he dug his nails lightly into the skin at my throat.

He felt impossibly heavy and his breath smelled like snow and blood, and his skin burned where it brushed me, unnaturally cold. Colder than liquid nitrogen.

"You don't really think you can go anywhere, Sammy? Do you?" He leaned in closer 'til his bared teeth brushed my ear with every word. A chill fire crashed through my nerve endings with every slight motion he made. Adrenaline and terror and a strange kind of lust pumped through my veins. Oh God. I needed to be gone but there was no way I could escape the King of Hell.

I squirmed somewhat beneath him, anyway.

He licked his lips (it was a disconcerting sound so close to my ear) and growled against my cheek. I feared he might bite me at any second.

He snickered as if he could hear my thoughts, and as the truck rattled across a rough patch of road his teeth clamped down on my throat just enough to hurt, and the top of his head banged my chin, making my teeth clatter together painfully.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I hissed, tense. I groped around looking for some kind of weapon as he nipped at my jawline. My fingers hit something hard and without thinking I grabbed it and swung it up into his chest—a pickaxe. The sound it made as it shattered his ribs and stuck in his chest was so familiar but nonetheless revolting. A whining sound escaped from his mouth along with black blood and ichor, dripping onto my face. His fierce eyes locked on mine as his hands ventured down to where my fists were still clasped around the handle of the pickaxe.

He smiled sweetly, smearing blood across my cheek as he nuzzled against my mouth with his nose, and pried my fingers off of the pickaxe, and wrapped his hand around the iron of the axe itself, and ripped it from his chest with a sickening squelch and crunch. He threw it out of the truck and the second it hit the ground the surroundings had changed again.

He chained me to a hard metal table, and then stood beside me with blood seeping across his creepy shirt and a crazed leer stamped across his stained mouth.

I wore nothing but the white slacks.

His pupils dilated viciously.

"Someone's been a bad boy..." He leaned down over me, moving his face close to mine so that we almost touched. "A very... _bad_... boy..." His voice was low and hoarse and gurgled with blood no doubt pooling in his throat and mouth. He straightened, cleared his throat, and spit a mouthful of it onto the concrete floor, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and twisting out of his crimson-soaked shirt. He threw that to the floor as well.

I pulled at my restraints. Something had changed when I stabbed him and it was definitely not a change in a positive direction. His eyes were glazed and I noticed the broken skin on his chest knitting itself together. Of course. All-powerful being and all that. A celestial wave of malice and charm had no trouble with a little stab wound.

He placed a hand lightly on my arm. I turned my head to look, and realized he actually _had_ left a fucking handprint on my bicep. Like Dean's, but a completely different kind of scar. Rather than being raised, it peeled, raw like the blistering abrasions on Lucifer's face and knuckles.

He reached his free hand around to my other arm, and straddled me before I realized he had even moved. The fabric of his jeans, stiff with drying blood, brushed against my dirtied suit pants.

Lucifer closed his eyes and hummed to himself. Something slow and sweet. He moved his hands away from my arms, and pressed them—palms flat—against my bare stomach, sliding them slowly up across my chest and over my shoulders and finally to cup either side of my jaw. I pulled uselessly at the shackles around my wrists and ankles and wondered why he'd even bothered to use restraints when he could just mojo me motionless.

I realized, of course, that this was Lucifer I was thinking about, and to him I was entertainment.

Chains are more fun. Or at least, that's what I had to assume.

"Sammy..." He spoke quietly, soft and pleased, completely different from just a few seconds ago. His eyes were half-closed and he rolled his shoulders as he curved his body closer to me. "You were right."

I made a confused sound in the back of my throat.

He clicked his tongue. "It's not a dream."

He pressed his mouth—cold and wet—against my temple, and his voice came out as a harsh whisper.

"It's all real."

My breath hitched in my chest, as he palmed at my anti-possession tattoo and the scar he'd left on my arm.

There was no way this was real.

We trapped him in the Pit. He was supposed to be locked up with Michael and Adam in the Cage and there was no way he could have escaped. Hell,_ I_ had barely escaped.

But then again, Castiel had pulled me free and _he_ was only a low-ranking angel. Lucifer was... well... _Lucifer_.

He bit down hard on the skin where my shoulder met my neck, drawing blood. He leaned away, a smug expression dripping across his face. I ground my teeth and breathed through my nose.

"You escaped?" I curled my fingers in against my restraints restlessly.

He sniggered to himself, and opened his eyes wide and caught me with them.

Snarled, "Yes."

My stomach turned sickeningly.

Lucifer. _Free_.

"You seem uneasy." He tilted his head in a mockery of concern. "I wonder why..." He simpered provocatively. His eyes widened and he stretched his arms over his head with a crackle up his spine and observed me with amusement written throughout his body. "You afraid of the dark, Sammy...?" His tone was foreboding.

I pulled at my shackles. "_No_." My voice sounded forced—choked. But it was true. The dark didn't scare me.

At least not until the moment everything went blacker than the Pit around me. The air felt thick like pitch and even the sound of my harsh breaths were muffled. Like everything had been wrapped around with thick concealing velvet. Lucifer shifted silently and the denim of his jeans chafed against my sides, and a strange bluish glow came from the direction of his face. His eyes. Rings of phosphorescence in the abyss.

He walked his fingers up my neck and ran a deceptively gentle hand down the side of my face.

There was a moment of absolute stillness while his eyes fixed me in place, and I barely felt the air slide before hurt shattered across my cheek. His knuckles left a sharp heat in their wake.

I didn't make a sound.

A condescending chuckle. "You'll never know what's coming." His nails dug into the open sore on my arm and I couldn't hold back a barked shout. "The dark is scary like that."

"Why?" I breathed shallowly through flared nostrils while his fingers tightened. I tugged at my restraints and realized they weren't there anymore. Flailed my left arm around to discover that the table had disappeared. I lay on cold, gritty concrete, instead. "No- _How_ are you free?"

He patted my stinging cheek pityingly. Moved to settle lengthwise beside me on the dirty ground and pressed his mouth close to my ear before breathing, "I won't tell you anything." He huffed out bitter laughter. "My job is to deceive and mislead, after all."

I squeezed my eyes shut. Then popped them back open. Blind either way.

We lay in utter silence.

Relaxed as much as possible against the gravel and dirt against my back.

He didn't breathe or do anything remotely human, but his eyes winked out at me from the blackness.

Gathering my courage I moved as quickly as I was able, and using the dull incandescence of his eyes as a way to anchor myself, I rolled onto him and pinned him against the ground by his wrists, using my weight and bigger build to trap him.

He laughed loudly and infectiously and evilly.

My breath came in gasps.

He melted away and I dropped down, jarring my elbows against the concrete.

I swore.

Suddenly a blue light illuminated the world blindingly, and I had to screw my eyes shut and throw an arm across my face as I stumbled to my feet.

"Imagine there's no Heaven, Sammy! It's easy!" Lucifer's voice boomed loud and crackling all around me. I opened my eyes gingerly, to see a vast swath of corpses lit by floodlights sweeping back and forth. I chewed on my lip. Looked like some sort of war had gone down. Or a bomb.

"But get this!" He screeched mockingly. "There's no Hell either!" He cackled. "Just a lot of sky hanging over a lot of death and destruction!" His laughter was jarring and persistent. "Delightful!"

"Lucifer, you're full of shit!" I threw my arms out wide. "I could _never_ believe there's no Heaven or Hell!" I pointed at the tower that held the floodlights. "I've been in both!" I paused, breathless and afraid. "Or did you forget?"

"Oh Sam, pretending to be so brave!" His voice was hissy through the speakers. "Don't try too hard or you'll hurt yourself!"

I clenched my jaw hard enough that it hurt. I didn't really expect to be able to trick Lucifer, of all people, so I didn't know how to intimidate him. Intimidating the Devil was probably impossible for anyone, though. I'd never seen him flinch or even drop someone's eye contact in the years I'd seen him and interacted with him. Not once.

He started laughing again, and it grew louder and tinnier and harsher, until it blocked out all other sounds, and the light blotted out most of what I could see.

I woke up with a strangled gasp and lifted my head to see myself as an experiment.

Flayed apart and laid open like an autopsy specimen.

The suffering tightened my throat, and every muscle tensed and trembled, and I barely whimpered with my face streaked with blood, and now tears.

Lucifer, in an impeccable tuxedo, paced around me with a bottle of some viscous, lurid liquid in one hand—the other held a wicked looking blade coated in that same fluid. Demon blood, probably.

He grinned down at me with wild eyes. "Morning, Sweetie-pie." He ran his tongue along dry lips. "Sleep well?"

I keened at him with unfocused eyes and no control over my limbs.

He gave me a sympathetic look—almost comforting—and knelt right at my shoulder, looking down at my face with a parody of sorrow stretched across his expression. "Aw, Sammy is going a little cross-eyed."

I tried to make some sort of controlled sound but my mouth lolled awkwardly and my tongue felt heavy and disobeyed me. The only noise that escaped my throat came out as a reedy moan.

Lucifer's eyebrows crinkled worriedly—seemed like they did, at least. "I know it hurts, Sam, but you gotta be tough for me, okay?" He left the half-empty vial on the floor beside my ear and let his now-free hand rest cool on my face, soothing the feverish and lacerated skin.

I nodded my head deliriously. I wasn't even sure what he was saying to me but it sounded nice and it sounded comforting, despite the knife in his other hand. I pressed my face needily into his palm.

I could feel the life seeping from every cut and gash on my body.

Maybe this was real. If it wasn't real, Lucifer would have—no doubt about it—made sure I was aware of my surroundings at all times to make the torture more immediate.

But I just wanted it over.

He kissed my forehead and his lips were scratchy and frigid.

"Goodnight Sammy."

I made a confused noise, fighting the downward pull of my eyelids.

A searing pain ripped through my chest where the rusted blade of the knife embedded itself with a thunk.

He stroked his fingers across my lips. The last thing I felt (other than pain) before I lost awareness.

Lucifer held a beating heart dripping blood in his hand.

Tattered wings took up the world, three pairs stretching black and red and blue and glittering from his back. They shifted like living things, and as they moved the light refracted differently across each feather—like a crow's, but made of galaxies and stardust and blood.

He gazed at the heart in his hands, eyes glowing and flashing.

He wore nothing, and I saw the extent of the burns across his vessel's body.

But that made no sense. How could he have wings in his vessel's body?

Not that I would be able to see him without going blind otherwise.

Maybe it _was_ a dream, then.

He sang under his breath.

It sounded like Green Day, of all things.

_No one ever died for my sins in hell  
As far as I can tell  
At least the ones I got away with_

I stood still and watched him as he caressed the fitfully beating heart in his hands. He crossed and uncrossed his legs in an oddly human gesture, seated on a mound of tarnished skulls and bloated corpses. He smiled softly to himself as if he were alone and thinking tender thoughts.

_And there's nothing wrong with me  
This is how I'm supposed to be  
In a land of make believe_

I let out a low breath I didn't know I'd been holding, and he turned his searing eyes toward me with a soft smirk. "Hello, Sammy."

"...He... Hello..." I made a choked sound. An overwhelmingly fetid and dead smell flooded my senses.

His wings plunged and brought him a foot or so closer.

Another deafening rustle and he stood directly in front of me, stiff feathers brushing against me.

I shrunk away, but he seemed to be nearer and nearer and nearer and I was falling into the colors of his eyes and his wings.

He gripped my chin in his red-soaked hand, and leered wide at me.

"You've been a good boy, Sammy..."

His wings destroyed the edges of the world.

The ground heaved up beneath me and waves of blood rushed up from the mud and bodies and pulled me down, and then I was sinking deeper and deeper into black water, throwing my arms up in desperation as his voice filled my skull.

I turned my head, trying not to inhale water, and saw my naked body wrapped around with thick rusty chains—agonizingly cold against my skin—with a block of stone attached at the end.

I wanted to scream, but didn't.

I held my breath as my vision narrowed, until I couldn't see and my body grew numb and I think I must have slipped into unconsciousness.

Black, black, black...

I arched violently against the black pebbles by the lake, hacking up a lungful of water in the moonlight, my clothes hanging heavily from my limbs. I heaved and scrabbled frantically and took deep shuddering breaths, rolling onto my stomach, wheezing.

"SAM?! _SAMMY!_"

My big brother's voice.

I looked weakly at my surroundings. Saw his familiar bowlegged run. "_dean_..." My voice came out as little more than a broken whine.

He bundled me upright, arms strong and comforting, reminding me of when I was a kid and he chased away the nightmares. "Sammy? Sam, what happened?!" He sounded frantic. "You were drowning or something! Who pulled you out?"

I could hear the tinniness of "Jesus of Suburbia" playing on the Impala's radio.

"No one... no one..." I whispered. My voice was painfully hoarse. I started to cough again and almost couldn't stop.

Dean clutched at me, rubbed his hand in circles at my back. "What do you mean? Someone had to have pulled you out, Sam!" He practically shook me, but realized what he was doing and held me carefully. "You were under the surface before I could even get out of the car! Someone had to have saved you!"

I gave him a weak, watery smile. "Dean. You didn't see anyone, did you?" I could feel my eyes twitching the way they did when I felt bad for someone.

He wilted against me. His jacket smelled like grease and leather and sweat— comforting. "Guess not." He pressed his nose into my wet hair. "Just glad you're alive, Sam."

"Me too."

On the drive back to the motel I listened wordlessly as Dean fidgeted and Lucifer sang along with Metallica, his feet propped against the window, head in my lap, twisting the hem of my shirt between his fingers, invisible to all but me.

The handprint on my bicep smoldered away icily beneath my sleeve.


End file.
